When my brother and I were around ten, my mother and aunts used to bring us to our decrepit two-story home in Quezon during summer when school was out. We rode in a non-airconditioned bus jammed with all sorts of packages: our clothing in bags with broken zippers, plates and cooking pots in plastic grocery bags, and other paraphernalia. There were odder sorts of belongings from other passengers – a chicken that clucked and ruffled its feathers in a bayong, bales of vegetables, and other stuff. It was a cramped, humid, five-plus hour ride to Lucena, where we had to transfer to an even more decrepit provincial mini-bus for the last two-hour leg to Mauban. I don’t remember Rency and I complaining at all though, that was how young and blindly obedient we were.
Our two-story home was already gaining its “haunted” reputation back then. Standing stark in the middle of an overgrown property, its heavy oak door tended to groan on its metal slider and slide open sideways with a bang. That surely signaled to whatever spirits there were that the owners had come back. The ground floor was hollow save for an aged round wooden dining table, five or six batibot chairs (typically old Spanish wire-framed variety), and a stand-alone wooden cabinet that used to contain some beloved china and other wares. (Every time we arrived, we noticed new thievery had taken place until almost nothing was left.)
Six sagging beams support the all-wooden second floor, which is reached by a nondescript set of stairs that have no banisters. If it was midday or still early in the afternoon, we took to cleaning up at once. My aunts would produce a floor polisher, a couple of brooms,and halved coconut husks used as foot brushes to polish and make the floor shine. My bro and I would be drenched in sweat by the time we finished the whole floor end to end.
The night was when the gloom wrapped the whole house and cocooned us in the light of a single kerosene lamp. After we had our dinner (bought usually from Maruto’s carinderia) in the round table, we trooped upstairs in single file. My mom or Tita Panching would lead, carrying the lamp, followed by my bro and me. None of us ever wished to be in the rear as the light receded and the darkness crept up, plunging the ground floor into deep shadow. A hand reaching through the gaps between the stairs was among our constant fears, sending us scurrying quickly up and getting hushed by the grownups in the process.
Adding even more to the night’s oppressiveness, apart from the lack of electricity, were the bats. They flew from one corner to another, darting low enough at times to hit our heads. To pass the time we played sungka, or just listened to the box-type transistor radio powered by four big batteries. We mostly tuned in to the program Gabi ng Lagim, heightening our fears of the rural night. There were two bedrooms but we all huddled together in the one beside the balcony.I don’t recall ever sleeping in the other bedroom that housed a 6-foot tall mahogany cabinet with a full length mirror, creepy enough as it was.
My mom usually occupied the iron-framed bed, without cushion. Bro and I would take turns sleeping either beside her or sandwiched between our two aunts on a banig on the floor. Once the lamp was taken inside, I didn’t venture beyond the doorway and its thick shadows anymore. Once we all went inside, we had just a few moments to laze around before the light had to be extinguished to save on kerosene. When we woke up, everything was airy and buoyant again.
All this took place more than twenty years ago. The house still stands, now occupied by the family of one of our former land workers. After the death of our eldest aunt, followed a few years later by my mom, we didn’t go home anymore. Years passed, my bro and I graduated and began our separate lives.
Now that I’m managing the farm, it’s a bit sad that we still can’t go back to that house. It’s even sadder that my Tita Panching, the last of the three women that shaped my growing up years, still can’t sleep in a decent room or home. I had a small hut built in our ricefield, really meant as a storeroom for the harvested palay. A week ago, we oversaw the harvesting done by our farmhands, and had to spend the night there just to see things through the next day.
I bought a mattress for her to sleep on, but still as she lay there that night, her frail body of skin-and-bones barely cushioned against the hardwood floor, everything came back to me. She has to put up with the discomfort up to now, just as she did back then: with her bad back against the stiff floorboards, insufficient lighting amidst the rural darkness, and a tin can to serve as her urinal by her side.
She has had a lifelong struggle to make sure we retain these lands to our name. And for all her troubles, she never prospered.
Will I also grow old managing these lands without reaping any bounty? Until when are we going to keep on pushing, before fate finally gives in?
I stepped out of the hut and inhaled the night air. Enough light came from the street lamps by the roadside to illumine most of the field as I gazed into its distance. It was my first time to stand there, at around 2 in the morning, the entire area with its few nipa huts breathing in silence all around me. A few stars were out twinkling through the black clouds. This is my base. Everything will start here, I vowed. And someday, we will end up back in the old house. And it will be made new again.
I can only hope and pray that my aunt will still be there, when I manage to complete that cycle.
